


oh please, give me mercy no more

by captainkilly



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, F/M, Human/Vampire Relationship, Vampire Bites, Vampire!Speirs, it's just me playing in someone else's sandbox and making a delightful mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Before the war, she hadn’t known the first thing about vampires beyond movies and some old tales her mother had attempted to shield her from. Now, with one as her commanding officer, she has learned most of the tales are half-truths at best and the real deal turns out to be a good bit more complicated than she anticipated.Billielikescomplicated.
Relationships: Ronald Speirs/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Things To Be Scared Of](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821027) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



> Hi, it's me, playing in MercuryGray's lovely sandbox yet again. Or, well, I'm borrowing Billie (with permission haha) and jiving with the little gift of vampire!Speirs. Reading Merc's small snippet [here](https://mercurygray.tumblr.com/post/633317171300384768/vampires-and-blood-one-of-the-girl-gang-and) might enhance the reading pleasure..

* * *

The house is mercifully quiet at this hour. It’s not the kind of silence that happens between one shelling and the other, either, and maybe Haguenau really is some form of reprieve after all. Even the company’s figured out a way to get some rest, for the most part, although some already announced they wouldn’t sleep worth a damn with the Germans still across the river from here.

There had been the equivalent of screeching, chaotic, mind-numbing panic earlier when an explosion had rocked the far end of town and some of the men had been hit in the fall-out. Even captain Speirs had been left howling in pain, which had made Nixon’s face grow awfully dark as he attempted to figure out how in the world the Germans had caught wind of Easy’s new captain being decidedly.. not human.

Billie shakes her head and sighs as she steps onto the top floor of the house. Before the war, she hadn’t known the first thing about vampires beyond movies and some old tales her mother had attempted to shield her from. Now, with one as her commanding officer, she has learned most of the tales are half-truths at best and the real deal turns out to be a good bit more complicated than she anticipated.

Billie _likes_ complicated.

Her tread on the floorboards is careful. She doesn’t really have a good excuse to be up here, after all, and she doubts _I want to heal the captain by offering him my blood_ is going to fly with whoever finds her here. Marjorie and Joan would drag her off and make her wish she had never set foot in the house at all, that’s for sure, and she’s certain Winters would relocate her to wherever Speirs is not. Thankfully, most of them are kept far too busy by battalion’s future plans to be aware of the fact that she hasn’t crawled back to where half her platoon is hiding out.

Billie exhales a breath as she reaches the bedroom she knows they took Speirs to. Roe had looked harassed as all hell, marching up and down these stairs while Speirs’s whimpers reverberated off the walls, and Nixon’d had an almighty screaming row with Winters about it. (Nixon had been the one screaming. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard Winters raise his voice unless in combat.) It’s quiet here now, and for a moment she reconsiders what she’s about to do.

Her hand finds the doorknob seconds later. She’s not afraid.

The room that greets her is mostly dark and silent as a tomb. Pale light filters in from the window. Streaks across the foot of the bed. She can make his shape out on the sheets. Dressed in uniform, still, despite the burns he’s said to have suffered. He’s seated atop the bed. The shine of glass reflects in his hands as he tilts it to his lips.

Billie almost leaves, but steps forward anyway. Lets the door fall into the lock behind her. Drinking from a glass doesn’t seem like anything close to what he needs tonight.

_She_ is what he needs.

“Sir?”

He goes perfectly still. His head tilts. His voice is a mere rasping sound, made heavy with the remnants of pain.

“Mitchell?”

She smiles when she spots the rather owlish blink of his eyes as he adjusts to her presence in the room. She steps forward into the dim light the moon will allow her tonight. It’s not yet full, though she’s already heard rumors about planned night-time patrols that make her wish it would never quite become that familiar round orb in the sky.

“Why are you here?” He questions her even as he slowly sets the glass down on the bedside table. Her nose wrinkles at the sight of the thick, dark liquid it contains. “Is something wrong?”

“I heard what happened, sir. Came to see if you were all right.”

“I’m fine, Mitchell.”

“Sir, excusez le mot, you look like hell itself ate you alive and then spat you back out because it disagreed with the way you taste.”

This is, she feels, a fairly accurate assessment considering the fact that burns litter his face and seem to travel further down his body. There are blackened marks scattered across all the bare patches of skin she can see. Even in this silvery moonlight, it’s clear that his movements are far more stiff and halting than they have any right to be.

“Nothing blood won’t fix.” It’s almost a dismissal. The next part certainly is. “It’s well past midnight, Mitchell.”

“I know _that_.” It takes all the willpower she’s got to not roll her eyes at him. Rolling her eyes at a centuries-old vampire, let alone one who’s supposed to be in charge of her, is probably not going to win her any favors. She shifts on her feet. “I thought you needed fresh blood in order to heal, though. Like.. drinking it cold from a glass is not the best way to go on that.”

“And you’re the expert on how a vampire heals?” Amusement colors his voice in dark, low notes. For one fleeting moment, his eyes seem to flash bright in the shadows of the room. She almost thinks he will dismiss her again, but then he admits truth in the next breath. “It’s not ideal, no. This animal blood does help, but slowly. It will take me a week or two to recover.”

“You don’t _have_ two weeks!” She hisses the words out with no small degree of incredulity. “We’re out on the line every day with patrols planned and other things going on. We can’t have you bed-ridden for the duration of those, sir.” Billie shakes her head. “You need blood straight from the vein of a living being right now. Why can’t yo–?”

“This does not leave this room, Mitchell, you hear me?” He interrupts her coldly, with a sharpness to his words that tells her it’s an order. She already nods her head in assent at the first hint of it. “Nixon, though magnanimous in his offer earlier, is too drunk to function in that capacity. He is the only one of the officers with prior.. experience.” His voice softens now that he attempts to explain what makes no sense to her. “Welsh is unsuitable due to his connection with Kitty. Winters, Warren, Gordon.. They all considered it a moment until Nixon told them what it would mean. I wouldn’t even ask it of the enlisted.”

“You drank from me,” she says, then, and rakes a hand through her unruly hair while she does her best to stare back at him. His eyes are fathomless. Still, she pursues the topic. “Down in the woods. When I offered.” She recalls the sight of the trees rising up far beyond her foxhole and her heartbeat spiking upward to meet the darkened sky at the touch of his teeth on her skin. Steps forward until she’s next to the bed. “You don’t need to ask, sir.”

“It takes more than a wrist this time, Mitchell. I need –”

He cuts himself off with a huff. His gaze dances around the room, but never meets her eyes. She’d almost think herself air if his fist didn’t clench tight around the white sheets at her approach. There’s something restless in him even now that he’s injured – perhaps even more so, given the pain burns like that cause one like him – but all movements are sluggish in comparison to the swiftness she’s seen from him in Normandy.

“What do you need?” Her voice barely makes it past a whisper. She perches on the side of the bed and tries not to notice how he almost flinches away from her. “If not the wrist, then.. the neck? Why the change?”

“Yes.” A sibilant sound of affirmation escapes his lips at her suggestion. He still refuses to acknowledge her presence beyond responding to her words. “I need to drink for a longer stretch of time, now, if I truly want to heal. It’s not comfortable to do this from a wrist.” His speech is halting. Hesitant, even. “Drinking from the neck is.. better.”

“You make it sound as if you’re walking to your doom at the mere thought of it, sir.” Billie tries to keep her voice light. Twists her hands in her lap a moment before she nods to herself. “It can’t be that bad, surely? I mean.. I know it’s a more common bite than the one on the wrist. Probably easier, too.” She shrugs. “You could drink from me again, you know. Wrist, neck, whatever.. I still trust you.”

“I don’t want to cause you harm.”

“It didn’t hurt last time.”

“Last time is nothing in comparison to how this might feel, Mitchell.” His voice is full of warning. Low, melodic, and warmer than he has any right to sound. “If I don’t cause you pain with the bite, I will cause something much worse.”

“Worse?” She laughs, then, throwing her head back openly and baring the skin of her neck to him for the first time. Billie knows he won’t kill her, not even when he warns her of a danger she cannot see, and so his argument really is no argument to her at all. “There’s very little I can think of that’s worse than pain, sir.”

“Pleasure.”

“Pleasure?” She echoes the word in wonder. Blinks at it in confusion. Shakes her head quite decisively moments later. “That’s not worse at all.”

“Isn’t it?” he asks, then, and his gaze finally locks with her own. His eyes are nearly pitch-black with the same hunger she saw in the forest. There’s something ravenous behind them that says he’s forgotten how to be prey to anything other than this burning, gnawing feeling of never truly being sated. “You don’t know what your offering would have me claim of you.”

“Then explain it.” She shifts on the bed. Shifts closer to him despite all warnings she’s ever gotten to never track a wolf into the dark of the woods. He doesn’t back away from her. “Explain how different it will feel from the other time you drank from me. You said this will last longer, but what else is there?”

“It will be slower if I take care not to harm you.” He sounds formal to her ears now. Distant, even though his eyes still burn pathways of longing into her skin. “You will not feel pain beyond the breaking of your skin beneath my teeth. Your body will react to the bite, to the blood, but not just by making you feel weak.” His gaze has come to rest on her throat. She smiles at the sight, even as his words turn careful and stilted. “You’ll feel.. the way you’d feel if caressed by a lover. You’ll respond to the bite from that place of pleasure.”

“Still not quite seeing a downside to this, sir,” she quips. Is quite certain that her smile now turns sharper than even his has the ability to be. Billie’s always been decisively practical in her decisions. This time really is no different. “If me falling apart a moment is what it takes for you to heal and lead the company, then.. that is fine.”

“You don’t kn–”

“Well, _sir_ , how _can_ I know if you won’t show me?” She issues the challenge as brazenly as she dares. Takes pride in the fact that her voice does not waver. “If you’ll just sit here and try to warn me off something you and I _both_ know this company needs if it wants to stand _any_ chance of making it out of Haguenau in one piece? You need to heal. I’m right here.” She swallows thickly as his eyes lock with hers. “It’s not complicated. Let’s not make it bigger than it is.”

“Mitchell..”

“If you’re going to bite me _that way_ , sir, it’s Billie.” She snaps the name out. Shrugs out of her uniform jacket and tosses it on the back of the nearest chair. Shivers as the cold night air in the room hits her bare skin. “Is it easiest if I lie down or do you want another five minutes to contemplate all your concerns and misgivings about causing me a moment of pleasure in this goddamn war?”

She isn’t altogether surprised when he doesn’t speak, but merely moves to the side to allow her to crawl into the space beside him. Speirs sometimes goes entirely non-verbal like this, which she’s certain isn’t because he has nothing to say but rather because he has too much to speak of. His eyes watch her like a hawk as she swings her feet up on the bed and collapses against the wrinkled white sheets and the lone pillow. She hums contently for a moment as she realizes that, yes, officers still get better beds than enlisted people do.

“Is this all right?”

“Did you even eat?” he asks her, sounding almost vaguely annoyed. “This could get..”

“I had two portions.” She sneaked the second in when Marj was sufficiently distracted, though she’s certain she didn’t quite fool Babe. His raised brows had indicated _story later_ , but she’s already resigned to lying through her teeth about this night for all eternity. “You’re stalling me.”

“You’re relentless.”

“You’re only now figuring that out, sir?”

“Billie.” Her name sounds soft and almost strange in this honeyed murmur. “Don’t call me sir. Not now.” A pause. His brow furrows in contemplation. “If you want me to stop, tell me. At any time, you hear me?”

“Yeah. What do I call you tonight, then, hm?” She smirks. Tilts her head toward him and teases out the names that have been scrambling around in her head since the last time he fed from her. “Ron? Raymond? D’Eglantier? Tertius?”

“You’re a menace,” he answers instead. His teeth glint sharply in the moonlight. “Are you certain..?”

She brushes her hair away from her neck in response. Bares her throat to him, now that he rises to a seated position and stares down at her with that familiar craving in his eyes. His burns are worse up close, fraying and tearing at his skin, and the black markings make him look more awful than that blue war paint ever did. She recalls fragments of him now that his stare is heated and fixed solely on her. Fragments that spilled out the last time, between teeth and blood somehow, and whispered stories in her ears that were vastly older than some sycamore trees.

His hands land on either side of her face. He doesn’t touch her. Just peers down at her a moment, with endless curiosity brushing all the hunger aside, and her belly swoops treacherously as she dares wrap one hand around his wrist. He lowers his head in an instant at the touch. Buries his face in the crook of her neck and comes to rest there. His lips brush against her skin with agonizing slowness. With reverence, even, if she had to name it proper, and perhaps this is really the only form of prayer he remembers at all. Her eyes sting at the kindness of the touch.

There’s nothing kind in the sharp, searing ache that shoots through her as his teeth pierce her skin. It’s a pinch, a moment of clarity, a moment of _fuck that is how that felt_ as memories of the Bois Jacques hurtle back into her brain, a moment in which her grip on his wrist must become painful even to him, and then her breath steadies somewhere between a gasp and a moan and it’s fucking _glorious_.

Heat soars to life in her belly, deep down where she knows she’s tried to quench all her fear and longing, and she gasps out a _yes yes yes_ against the liquid fire that threatens to spill out into her limbs. This is nothing like the last time, when he’d so carefully taken from her and still managed to work her into a daze between memory and reality. The graze of his teeth against her neck is more sinful than the sensation of his fangs locked around her slender wrist, and if she was the praying sort she’d be pleading _mercy_ against this first touch of his tongue. She muffles a cry against his shoulder as he presses down against her neck and sets her body aflame.

He stills at the sound. And oh, there’s marble beneath her touch as he turns utterly motionless at the sound of her cry. The pressure dissipates. The sting does, too, and she moans in desolation at the absence of it.

“Billie,” he rasps against her throat, voice thick and almost shaking, “tell me to stop.”

“No,” she whispers. Tangles her other hand in his hair and tugs lightly at the longer strands. “Drink from me. It’s all right.”

“Don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not hurting me,” she replies, and laughs delight out into the frigid air. Heat rises to her cheeks as she contemplates the feeling. “Far from it. I know what you meant, now.”

“No, you really don’t.”

Before she can ask more, before she can dispute it, his mouth is on her again. This time, she’s prepared for the sharp pinch that’s her skin breaking beneath his teeth. She’s ill-prepared for the shiver that runs down her spine at the noise of sheer want that trembles through him when her blood meets his lips and tongue. Even less prepared for the languid longing that awakens within her limbs at the satisfied moan he breathes against her neck.

And oh, she wants this. She wants him – she knows she does, maybe she always has, maybe that’s why they never had a thing to do with Dog Company back at Toccoa – and she can’t stay away from this. She can’t steer clear of danger, not when danger tastes like this.

Her lips brush against the crook of his neck now. Press down against his skin in a kiss, because she has no teeth with which to tear her way into his heart the way he has with her. Her hand winds into his hair more tightly, pulls him closer to her still as if she can let him come to rest between her limbs and inside her blood so easily, and her limbs tangle with his when his weight shifts and lands upon her.

She gasps against him as the bite turns sharper a moment, almost as if he means to warn her before white-hot longing sears to life within her belly and threatens to claim her whole. Her hand slips down to his neck. Digs her nails into his skin as hard as she can, as fiercely as she dares, and grips his wrist so tight as a shudder of utter longing trembles through her. And oh, oh, _oh_ , it’s never quite felt like _this_ before. Her limbs loosen around him as he presses against her and claims her blood, her life, her very heartbeat that pulses and spikes in her body at every touch of his lips.

It’s not _human_ , this hunger that claims her in turn, this wanton tilt of her hips up against his, this ragged breath she exhales against the burns that fade with every drop of her blood he claims for himself, this series of cries and gasps and moans she buries against his skin in an attempt to muffle any sound that expresses how much he makes her come alive.

Fuck, but the moon might as well be full for the keening howl that escapes her as his hand grips her waist and pulls her body closer to him. She can’t cling to him now that she’s turned nearly weightless in his arms. Her hands scramble to find purchase within the sheets instead as her head tips back and his mouth trails after rivulets of her blood that are plotting their own escape upon her skin. His tongue laps up even the smallest droplet and sets her body utterly ablaze with a want that furls around her heart and screams louder than anything she’s ever needed before.

Their eyes meet. Breath rushes out her lungs as she takes in his gleaming dark gaze, his flushed cheeks now entirely unblemished by the hurt that was so visible earlier tonight, his mouth coated red with her blood a moment before he licks his lips mostly clean of her.

For a moment, she thinks _Tertius_ as the room flares to life around her with song and dance from long ago. Another moment and it’s _Raymond_ , in chains and snarling fury, before it fades into the calm of _D’Eglantier_ that used to burn through courts of long ago at a most steady pace. But above all, beyond anything, she knows _Ron_. She knows him as a shadow now turned to light, as the collision between them takes shape, as their limbs tangle in the sheets and his face comes to rest against her own.

“Ron,” she whispers, warmth curling and stretching within her and making her so infinitely sure of what she offers, “Ron, s’il te plaît, take what you need from me.”

His lips find hers, then, and she wishes she had the strength to keep from falling apart. It’s a hesitant touch at first, grazing and nipping at her mouth, brushing against her lips, leaving a vague coppery taste on her tongue. She kisses back, then, suddenly the hungrier of the two, suddenly the one craving something the other can give, and he groans defeat into her mouth as she pulls him closer still. She thinks she’d laugh at anyone who thinks she’s his, truly, when all she needs to do to make him hers is keen sounds of longing against his ear as his mouth traces the pulse of her heart with more affection than a man like him is meant to feel.

But oh, she knows she’s _his_ most undeniably, too, and laughter escapes her as he drinks from her anew and makes _want_ pool between her legs in the very moment he sucks life from her veins. Laughter tumbles from her lips until he finds the point that makes her gasp, makes her moan, makes her throat go hoarse in a scream his hand frantically attempts to silence. She’s always been loud this way, always a little over any kind of edge she could find, always giving herself wholly to the moment she’s in. She laughs again as he mumbles a hushing sound against her throat that sounds entirely too proud to be genuine, as his hand curves over her hip and tightens there, as he allows her to slowly come undone beneath him.

Laughter dies on her tongue as fierce heat swoops through her and leaves her panting, breathless, sighing against his ear when he nips at her neck again. And oh, now, oh, _this_ is what he meant with pleasure. _Oh_ , she mouths wordlessly against his neck, legs restless now that he envelopes her whole and drinks from her more deeply than ever before. _Oh_ , she sighs happily, with her whole being humming in joy beneath his touch. _Oh, please, please, please,_ she keens against him, with her grip on his neck and hip turning relentlessly demanding, with her body tilting upward against him in search of anything anything _anything_..

She shudders as pure, pure bliss descends within her mind. Muffles her cries against his shoulder, first, but then her mind goes _white_ and her head tilts back with the sheer force of feeling that trembles through her limbs. _Please please please yes, yes, yes, plea–_ Billie gasps against the sudden feeling of his lips on hers that capture the scream that threatened to tear free, moans against the sensation of her own slick blood being smeared across her lips as he forgets himself and collapses atop her, shivers as a hazy sense of contentment wraps itself around her limbs and settles deep down in her core.

Her hand’s in his hair again. She smiles a languid, lazy grin up at the ceiling before she licks the blood off her lips. Shivers a moment at the taste. Wonders what it is like, for him, to taste it and be nourished by it. His arms are a warm cage around her. His face is buried against the wounds he left upon her. He’s heavy in her arms, so heavy, and for one blessed moment he is all that’s truly real in this world.

“Mm,” she murmurs, once she finds her voice, “how’re you feelin’?”

“Healed.” His voice is soft but decisive. “Warm.”

“That’s good, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he echoes. A tremor goes through him. It takes a moment for her to realize he is muffling a laugh against her skin. “Very good. Billie..”

“I enjoyed that.” She laughs, too, as she runs her foot down the back of his leg and feels him shiver against her. “I enjoyed that a _lot_.”

“I heard. Felt every bit of it, in fact.” He lifts his head now. His cheeks are flushed. His dark eyes glitter with something akin to amusement. “You’re exquisite.”

Her own cheeks heat up in response to the compliment. She refuses to meet those burning eyes that seem to be able to see all the deepest parts of her. Isn’t sure why he stays, or why he is not making any move that tells her to go.

“Billie.”

His voice is an anchor. Her name is what steadies her. She bites her lip as she attempts to meet the fire she willingly embraced. She fashions herself brave like that, even when her cheeks burn and her mind is kicking up into overdrive on all the reasons why she’s no good.

When she finally dares look at him, there is softness. Softness in his gaze, warm and welcoming, and softness in the smile that fleetingly dances at the corners of his mouth. Softness in his hands as he never breaks contact with her skin. There’s something gentle in the way he rolls over onto his back and draws her into his arms, too. For a moment, her eyes sting with tears.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and somehow the affection that laces through his voice doesn’t seem unnatural at all. “Brave, beautiful. Rest with me tonight.”

“Oh, you are _drunk_ ,” she giggles, nestling against him for as long as he’ll allow. It’s something new within him that she doesn’t elect to catalog just yet. She’s not sure she _could_ , at that. “Are you always like this, after?”

“No.” His voice is like silk slipping over her skin. “You are just particularly.. intoxicating.”

“Drunken flattery,” she quips. Presses her lips against his cheek a moment, then yawns. Her hand trembles. “If I am that to you, why did you argue with me about this?”

“Billie..”

“Why, Ron?” She yawns again. Feels herself turn drowsy, now that she’s come to rest against him and exhaustion settles into her limbs. She isn’t sure how much he took from her. Knows it’s going to take time to recover. Far more time than when he last took from her, and she’d felt weak at the knees for a full day then. “Why fight this?”

Her eyes close no matter how much she attempts to keep them open. She sighs defeat when he draws her into his arms and lets her head rest against his chest. She’s not certain how she’s going to go back to saying _captain_ and _sir_ as if this night never existed. Shoves that problem away until the morning. She’s too heavy now and too high to come down at the same time. She buries herself in his embrace and resolves everything can wait until the light of day.

Billie misses the brush of lips against her brow. Misses the defeat that settles over him as he glances down at her and smiles a rare, full smile that is not at all born of teeth and hunt. Misses the murmured admission of fear that lodges itself in the dark of the room he speaks it to.

“Because you weaken me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received a Tumblr request from [junojelli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junojelli) to add the morning after for this fic.. and couldn't help but indulge.

* * *

Dawn comes. He can trace it in the air long before the light in his bedroom changes color. There’s the taste of dew in his mouth, like the water from the well he used to drink from long ago, and the earth waking beneath him.

He lies awake and wills for sleep to claim him before the room coats itself in golden hues. Watches the air around him turn from dark to lightest blue. It streaks across his skin in daring – day challenging night – before it tumbles into her hair.

Her hair.

He scarcely dares move a limb. She is strewn out atop him, tangled with his body like she cannot decide whether to fight or embrace him, and her hair streams out across his bare chest like ripples in the water. There’s something of earth to her that roots him in place. Something of the sea, too, which he only remembers because her hair smells of the bitter orange that blossomed on the winds that pushed him away from Italy’s shores so long ago.

There are a great many things in his life he doesn’t have the power to recall. He’s lived more than one life, more than many will ever receive, and he doesn’t care to think of all the days that came before this. Still, the hour comes before dawn that he is reminded of the sea and the citrus trees and water so clear it turned his mouth into a crystal lake.

The hour comes and her heartbeat presses up into his skin with every inhale and exhale that moves her atop him. She’s warm, so warm, so much like the sun that he thinks he’ll be scorched for touching her. So much like the heat of something that would harm him if exposed to it too much that he almost doesn’t dare hold her.

Yet hold her he does, arms wrapped so tight around her and legs pinning hers in place, because she’s warm like sunshine and he thinks he’s missed the heat all these centuries. He brushes affection against the top of her head as though he can crown her with the weight of all he feels. Dawn comes to rest in her hair and turns it to spun gold beneath his lips. There’s something of treasure here which he cannot steal but has stolen him.

Her pulse is inside him, too.

_Cinnamon and flowers,_ he would’ve said, if asked for her taste on his lips. _Liquid heat_ , he would’ve murmured, if requested to speak of her blood pouring down his throat and warming his body. _Mitchell,_ he would’ve identified in the recollection of her body yielding beneath him. _Belinda_ , he would’ve known from the memories that poured from her mind and settled beneath his skin. _Billie, Billie,_ he would’ve chanted if he’d had any words left for what she’d done to him.

Her heartbeat resides inside him. Heals him. Warms him. He doesn’t want to move, because moving means losing the sound of her breath and body against his own. He doesn’t dare speak, because any word could spike her pulse and make her remember women like her aren’t meant to feel like anything but prey in his presence. He doesn’t dare remember. He doesn’t dare to close his eyes and recall.

Oh, his mother would laugh, he’s so sure of it. Would laugh a maker’s laugh, joyful and triumphant, at the idea of her child losing his head at the feeling of someone else’s heart come to rest against his own. And she’d _warned_ him, hadn’t she, so long ago now, before they’d fought and before he’d left and before she’d banished him from lands he now seeks to conquer again. She’d said _you’ll fall in love with one_ as though she’d seen the end of him and was thrilled to contemplate it. She’d told him so smugly he’d struck out at her until she bled, and still she had laughed and said _you will know it too_.

He knows it wholly now that the heartbeat of the woman in his arms picks up in speed.

If she lives, his maker, he thinks he might owe her an apology. Thinks he might kneel before her – differently from the way he’d kneel for this woman in his arms, but yield all the same – and beg her forgiveness. So many centuries of seeing the dawn, and only now he comprehends the terror first light must have brought the queen of all Germania when he’d marched his armies into her lands and sought to overthrow her rule. He, as now, was the conquered one. He, as now, lay defeated.

He didn’t understand it then.

“M-morning,” comes the sleepy murmur, and he understands it all now.

Terror seizes him as she shifts in his embrace. He fears her more than he fears morning light. Thinks he’ll bite his tongue until it bleeds if that stops him from tasting springtime flowers. Thinks he’ll need to wash her away with blood so filthy he would retch and twist his stomach from the mere scent of it. Her face tilts up at him, eyes sleepy but already watchful, and he thinks he’ll die from the bare steel that resides in her gaze.

“Morning,” he affirms, as if to tell her she’s survived his night. He’s vaguely proud that his voice doesn’t shake the way it did when she’d told him to feed and he’d come so close to controlling the urge to drown in her. “How’re you feeling?”

“Could ask you that,” she shoots back, and he almost recoils before he sees the smile that plagues the corners of her mouth. She takes a moment. Frowns as if she can’t quite place the thought. “I feel.. fine, I think? You seem.. better?”

“All healed,” he affirms, because that’s the safest thing to say. He cannot find the words to say _you’re inside me and I am whole_ any more than he can explain the fear that makes his hands shake. “You need to rest. More hours than this.”

“I need to get up. Get food. Or something.” Her cheeks flush a pretty, slightly embarrassed-looking pink. “They’ll wonder where I am if I don’t.”

“I’ll get you food. You’re in no condition to get up.” He tries to make it sound like an order. Tries to establish that, yes, in this he is still her superior looking out for her well-being. Tries to ignore his own teeth markings upon her body now that she pushes herself up and reveals the truth of who he is and will always be. “I’ll speak to Lewis. He’ll understand.”

“Nixon might, but the rest?” She shakes her head. “I can’t.. I have to get up.”

“Your arms are trembling.”

She huffs out indignation at his rebuke. Sits up even further, even though she turns paler and smaller in this space at the motion. She’s nothing but stubborn. He thinks it charming, even when it had proved troublesome in Normandy and quarrelsome ever since. There’s something entirely _her_ about the set of her mouth and the impatience with which she rakes her hair back and lets out a huff of breath.

“I have to get up,” she repeats.

“You’re allowed to stay,” he answers. Keeps his voice light like the sun’s rays that coat her in something holy, something of a halo, something that he wants to claim as angel or saint or his undoing the longer he looks at her. “Recovery takes time. You need to sleep, to rest, to just.. get your strength back in full.”

“Right.” She frowns again. It’s not distrust, not really, but it’s not acquiescence either. “I thought.. I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d..”

“Want you to stay?”

She nods, wordlessly, as he voices her own fear better than he can his own. Her gaze drops and shifts away from his body. Shadows pass over her face – tendrils he recognizes as her mother, her family, her place in the world – and turn her away from him.

“Billie,” he whispers, feeling a wholly new terror sweep through him now that she turns small and so unfamiliar that even her scent in the air threatens to shift and sour, “I want you to stay.”

“Why?”

Even her voice is small. Her glance at him is that of a stranger.

“It’s custom.” He smiles at the thought of that. “My mother – my maker – used to call it that, at least, and I never quite comprehended it. She used to say that the offer of blood is a gift that needs to be honored.” He’d had it beaten into him. Had had the respect for blood drummed into him by a woman who’d taken his life and turned him into something eternal. He shakes his head at the memories. “Her whole clan.. They see it as something that is an exchange between equals.”

“I didn’t know that.” She steadies herself between his legs. He watches as she shifts from _Belinda_ to _Billie_ in the blink of an eye. This time, when she looks at him, she is herself again. “Is that what it is to you as well?”

“It never was. Before last night, it never was.”

“What is the difference?”

“You,” he says, and laughs as he pushes himself upright to face her. “I couldn’t own you if I tried. I would’ve stopped at any point.” He prays he would’ve had enough strength to, at least, and that alone is a foreign thing. “You are different to me.”

“I’m nothing like that.” She shakes her head. Blushes again as her heartbeat rises and blossoms in his ears with a sweet thrum. “I’m not.. I.. I’m not _special_.”

“Billie.” He anchors her with the name by which he knows her. Tries to stop her from fleeing into memories designed to hurt. Tries to chase the dark away from a woman who’s always reminded him of the sun. “You’re worth honoring.”

“You’re just –” She huffs. Indignant. Adamant. “Impossible, god, you’re impossible! You and” – a nudge of her hands against his chest – “everything you make me.. I can’t. I can’t feel like this.”

He dares, then, because there’s a smile in her voice and her eyes are wild and she’s _beautiful_. Dares place his hands on her hips. Dares lean in close, until her breath hitches and her pulse spikes, and ask clarification.

“Like what?”

“Like –”

She presses against him, then, as words fail her. Her hands are on his thighs, her arms tremble as she pushes herself up, and her lips land on his haphazardly and messily and so much like _Billie_ that he knows himself no longer. She kisses him, this woman, this mortal who never once feared him but only feared what he could make her feel, and a noise of assent escapes him long before he thinks of kissing her back.

Kiss her back he does, though, just before she pulls away. Just before she can think of leaving again. Just before the sun rises fully in the sky and dawn turns to day, he kisses her back.

“Stay,” he tells her between one kiss and the next. “I’ll explain it all. I’ll keep them from this door.” He will lay waste and ruin to the whole of this army before they dare disturb her, but he knows better than to admit to such violence out loud. “Stay and let me honor what you gave me.”

Oh, yes, his mother certainly would laugh at his predicament. He thinks he will tell her of it, someday, when he meets his maker again.

“You sure know how to keep a girl in your bed,” she laughs, then, and all thoughts of long ago fade in the light of her smile. “Are you really okay with it, or just.. humoring me?”

“I was raised by a clan that saw the taking of blood as something so sacred that they’d rather spit out the blood of their enemies than risk it spilling down their throat.” He knows there’s no romance in his words. Knows she needs to hear them all the same. Knows it explains what she saw him do in Normandy, which he remembers has been a question in her mind all this time. “When you offered, last night, and I accepted.. I wanted to make you feel how much it means. How much it means that it’s you.”

“I had to. You’re the only one I trust to be in charge around here.” She laughs, again, but there’s something jaded in its hollow sound. Her eyes never leave his face. “And I was.. curious, I guess? I wanted this.”

“How’s that curiosity doing? Satisfied?”

Her kiss now is one of warning. “Not even close.”

“Oh?” He smirks as a sweet, longing scent washes over him. Allows his hands to stray from her hips in search of what makes her meet his gaze so daringly now. “You want to know more?”

“Until I’m satisfied,” she smirks back, and almost succeeds in masking the way her breath hitches at his touch. She’s everywhere around him as dawn breaks and welcomes the day. The new challenge she issues carries his old name. “Go ahead, _Tertius_. Honor me.”

“Billie,” he says. Chants her name against her lips before the first gasp of pleasure escapes her lungs. Laughs against the hollow of her throat, where her heart is clearest, and presses a kiss to the marks that say she’s his to have. “Billie. Come here.”

Brighter than any sun, she moves atop him and claims his life.


End file.
